A few short weeks ago I never thought I would be able to write any poetry, or least not something I’d show without severe embarrassment.

Last year I was totally tongue and brain tied in a workshop by the lovely Meredith Costain. During her workshop each participant came up with gorgeous poem after poem, made up one the spot, while I hid my piece of paper and tried to look invisible. My friend Renee LaTulippe changed all that. Our love of writing picture books brought us together in the same online critique group. Late last year she asked us to be beta testers/ students for her course The Lyrical Language Lab. This is some of what her course offers:

Though I already held Renee in high regard as a poetry expert, and like many others subscribe to her inspiring blog No Water RiverI was a little skeptical that I would be able to learn anything at all about poetry.

But she did it! Renee took a bunch of uncultivated, uncultured, unpolished, poetry deprived, rhythmically challenged and lyrical lowbrows and whipped them into shape!

When I say whip, I mean softly coaxed, giving us the honest truth when we needed it but packaged in such sincerity and good will and with a firm belief that we could grasp the concepts of poetical language that even we started believing in it.Poetry seemed so vague, uncontrollable and unidentifiable to me. And though I have read poetry, and many of my favorite picture books are in rhyme or have that sense of lyricism and rhythm, I never thought I could use that in my picture book texts. Even after just a few lessons I was able to come up with a double dactyl and a short poem in trochee. These two poems here were just done as part of the daily homework assignments during the first five lessons.

And here are those links again:Renee LaTulippe Launch post and GIVEAWAYThe Lyrical Language Lab Course information About Poetry Friday: (from Kidlitosphere Central) At the end of the week many children’s book aficionados and bloggers use their sites to contribute favorite poems or chat about something poetical in an event called Poetry Friday. The features can be for children or adults, can be original poems, reviews of poetry books, reviews of poetic picture books, links to poems at copyright protected sites, thoughts about poetry, and more.